QS asks the CAQ to cancel the third link to expand Quebec schools that request it

Photo: Jacques Boissinot The Canadian Press Quebec Solidaire representative for Quebec City, Sol Zanetti, at the National Assembly, in November 2023

Léo Mercier-Ross

Published at 3:00 p.m.

• Québec

The head of Québec solidaire (QS) for Quebec City, Sol Zanetti, “formally asks” the Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ) to “review the necessary expansion requests, to ensure that there is room for all children in our schools” in the Quebec City region.

“The classes in our national capital are overflowing, and this jeopardizes our children’s chances of success. However, the CAQ has refused all school expansion requests in Quebec City, in addition to cutting $400 million from the budget across Quebec,” said Mr. Zanetti in a press release announcing the request.

QS states that in 2018, “only around fifty expansion projects were accepted by the Ministry of Education, out of 170 requests across Quebec. This proportion was even lower in 2022, when only 45 projects were funded, out of 340 requests.”

To finance these requests for school expansions, the solidarity MP “suggests giving up for good on wasting billions of public funds on a third highway link.”

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In an email, the office of the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, responded by recalling that “investments in the construction, expansion and renovation of schools have increased from $9 billion to $23 billion, an increase of 150%. This is the catch-up we need to do after the years of Liberal austerity.”

“We know that infrastructure needs are significant throughout our school system. Our 3,000 schools have lacked love. The underinvestment by the Liberal and PQ governments has hurt,” says the CAQ.